Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton talks at Friday's symposium at the New Orleans Convention Center. Panelists, singers, poets, and other distinguished guests spoke for the 2007 Essence Music Festival.

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, a front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, is slated to speak around noon today as part the Essence Music Festival's return to New Orleans after a year hiatus because of Hurricane Katrina

A crowd already was gathering around 11:30 a.m. to listen to the New York senator in a cavernous hall of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, a venue that is certain to evoke memories of the botched emergency response to the storm. Clinton has criticized the Bush administration's handling of the disaster during several trips to the city, including a May tour of Broadmoor, Central City and the Lower 9th Ward.

Clinton's appearance was part of the three-day festival's "empowerment seminars," daylong colloquiums featuring panel discussions of politics and social issues, musical performances and poetry readings. Former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial participated in Thursday's seminar.

U.S. Sen. Barak Obama, an Illinois Democrat who in recent months has closed the fund-raising gap with Clinton among the party's presidential hopefuls, spoke to Essence participants Thursday at the Superdome.

Clinton was to arrive in New Orleans after participating in a political forum hosted by the United Steelworkers union in Cleveland, Ohio, according to her campaign office. The senator, along with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, spent much of the week hopscotching around Iowa, where the January caucuses will be critical to determining who wins the nomination.